Anzac Day – A reflection — Bishop Stuart Robinson

Posted on April 22, 2015 
Filed under Resources

Bishop Stuart RobinsonAs we approach the 100th Anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli and the 70th Anniversary of Victory in the Pacific later in year, I’m minded to report a conversation I had with a soldier – NX146695 – who witnessed the formal “surrender” in the eastern half of the Netherlands East Indies on September 9, 1945.

On Morotai Island, NX146695, along with 10,000 Australian and Allied troops, stood motionless as Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Military Forces, General Blamey accepted Japanese Second Army Commander, Lt. General Teshima’s surrender of approximately 126,000 men.

NX146695 has vivid memories of that great day.

But he also carries memories of the cost; the cost of freedom; the cost of peace.

NX146695 (who is now 92) came face to face with death – and survived; many of his friends and comrades did not.

Indeed more than 100,000 Australians have given their lives – from the Boer War to Peacekeeping operations in this new century.

Even as we speak Australian Forces are on their way to Iraq to engage with a new enemy…not a country per se – but an ideology cloaked in a religion; ‘I.S.’ by name.

NX146695, Sergeant Harold Robinson, my father, knows first-hand the reality of being ready to lay one’s life down for another – as do so many of those who will read this simple piece.

It was Jesus who once said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that they lay down their life for their friends” John 15:13.

That inscription is also found on countless headstones across the former Western Front. I served as a Priest in Flanders and in the dead of winter I’d stand in those old trenches and weep as I contemplated the agony and the despair that faced combatants (on all sides).

And yet all is not hopeless. It isn’t.

Lest we forget that in order to bring peace between God and his wayward family, that’s exactly what Jesus – the one who first articulated those headstone inscriptions, did. He gave his life.

Yes, Jesus absorbed sin’s curse and sin’s punishment that I might go free.

My sin was laid in him – his righteousness was laid on all who believe.

He was willing to pay a very great price; the price of peace – his life for mine; for all who believe.

And we know his work was effective; we know that peace with God is available to all who trust this Jesus, because God raised him from that death; the price for sin having been fully paid by God in Christ.

As we honour those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom, so too must we honour and worship and serve Him who gave his life that we might be set free from the clutches of our last great enemy – even death itself.

– Bishop Stuart Robinson is Bishop of Canberra & Goulburn.